Larian Studios Forums Divinity General Discussion A single sameless map is unnecessary and counterproductive effort

As the title says.

We already discussed this in the past in relation to BG3 AND it's something that came up as passing comment in other threads of this very same subforum, but I think it's a good time to refresh the feedback on this specific topic and give it a dedicated thread.

I think Larian's insistence on trying to cram as much as possible on a single "regional" map is actively harming their ability to build credible worlds.

BG3, even more than DOS 1 and 2 before it, suffered a lot of what some of us on this forum baptised as the "diorama effect", where the environment feels more like a crammed toy miniature constantly wrapping around itself rather than a series of real places.
Which is how we got stuff like the goblin leadership struggling to find the "super hidden druid grove" literally placed 100 meters down the same main road.

While I won't take away from Larian the credit of being able to build great looking locations (sometimes even with very good layouts from a gameplay perspective) I genuinely think their world design would benefit from "fragmenting" their gaming world more, in a series of smaller but more abundant submaps, increasing the number of locations and connecting them through a world map.

Maybe even add some abstract "map travel" through it, eventually opening the way to the possibility to throw in some "randomized" -but not really- encounters to their usual formula.
Then again that would be separate design decision to made that doesn't change the main point of this thread.

I see no problem with Larian's concept. The effect you've mentioned happened not because they crammed a lot of places of interest together but because they've poorly disguised the grove.

Maybe they could space out those locations a bit more though, while keeping the structural integrity of the region. They would need to add some content to compensate for it however. Maybe use verticality and some new mechanics in order to create traversal "puzzles" aka real environmental obstacles. Or add mounts, but sounds too ambitious.

Well, thank god I took time to explain what the problem was, then.

You'd need to ask yourself if that would ACTUALLY be a better solution, though.

Is "we need more empty space on our single, seamless map" really ANY better than "What if we had more maps to begin with"?
What of the two would PACE the game better in your opinion?
What would allow for a more coherent set of different locations?

Maybe even more importantly, what would be more technically challenging to achieve, as well?
I'm going to guess that they are already pushing pretty close to the limits of what they are able to cram on a single map/load in memory in a single passage.
Having more and smaller maps would lower the technical restrctions they'd met while at the same time giving them room to detail and develop every single major location better.

Offsreening travel or location entering is bad immersion and breaks, not mends "PACE" in my opinion.

Remember the infamous Euron Greyjoy fleet from GoT? Or even closer to home, army of the Absolute 'marching' towards Baldur's Gate that arrives at the gates quicker than our small party.

Offscreening events is a narrative challenge, if they can pull it off then ok. I think it's safer to make a seamless map with places of interest that play off of each other in real time. Like it happens with the tiefling party secret back up tiefling scout NPCs appearing if you have a single party member at the grove while killing Ragzlin and the crew at the same time. It is really cool and immersive to see this kind of interaction.

Counterpoint.
Clicking to move from an area to another (and then having individual areas that are packed with interesting content) is FAR better than "walking five minutes through empty parts of the same seamless map only to sell a better illusion of scale", in my opinion.

AND that's saying nothing of the different levels of feasibility of the two solutions, which I already addressed in the final part of my previous reply.



This has literally notyhing to do with the point of this thread, though.
You are talking about narrative expedients here when I'm talking about structural design.

I am talking about implications of your suggestion being realised. It poses certain challenges for narrative cohesiveness.

I revisited your post and it seems to be more about world credibility (say, immersion) than structural design as I understand it. Do you want this thread to be a purely gameplay oriented discussion? If so please provide how Larian's level design falls flat in that regard. Apart from the Hidden Grove issue I've already addressed as well.

It's about BOTH.

More well-paced locations, with room to be properly distanced one from the other and fully fleshed out, rather than crammed in a 8x8 meter corner just because they need to be all part of the same seamless map.

The main issue with Larian's implementation is with scale.

Their areas are very condensed, which creates a narrative dissonance because of the lack of distance between things (Which also gets exacerbated by the zone changing between acts). This isn't exclusive to just Act 1 and the grove. But other things too, for example, why is their a town literally 2 feet outside of Baldur's Gate? In what universe is it logical to make a town a stone's throw away from one of the largest cities?

They have implemented some additions, like how Underdark, Grymforge and Mountain Pass are their own zones rather than cramming them into a singular map for their act... But then these (Especially Grymforge and Mountain Pass) are very small zones because of the lack of content in them (Mountain Pass being literally just the Lathander's Light puzzle, the Creche and that 1 group of undeads on the way to Elminster)

In games like DA:O or PotR, they exclusively do the "Every location is just a teeny tiny location that you travel to via a world map" thing. But it doesn't offer scale either, as the "Travelling" is just a glorified loading screen with the only other aspect being the chance for random encounters (PotR also had some time based interactions, notably early on when there's a scripted attack on the base that also signifies certain other locations being emptied of encounters)

A larger seamless world provides the best feeling of scale, as you actually travel distances personally so you feel the scale.

The major caveat is that in order to do scale, you have to implement ways to deal with the scale because it's not fun to spend hours travelling around a map (Even Eurotruck Simulator, a game about spending hours travelling around a simulated real world, cuts a lot of fluff to make routes shorter so it doesn't take you literally days to drive across the globe)

So things like, mounts, teleports (Like BG3's waypoint runes) and other travel options (In DOS2 your base was a ship, which presumably can sail to different ports. You can also offer caravans to "Fast Travel" between towns)

Of course, with scale also comes the other issue... Which is density. Which is a continual problem for open world games, such as Elden Ring or Ubisoft games. Where they want to make the worlds engaging by having density of PoIs because of the old Skyrim ideology of "You can wander in any direction and quickly run into something interesting" - Which leads to content shortages and thus a reliance on copy/paste (Hence all open world games reusing the same PoIs repeatedly).

So it often becomes a case of pick your poison. Do you want scale? Then you either get barren environements or copy/paste content. Do you want interesting environments? Then you get tiny worlds as everything is crammed into a small area.

World map location systems aren't the solution either as they tend to be small, barren locations and simply cut out the exploration entirely, turning the game into a theme park simulator where you just load into a bunch of unconnected locations, do like 2 things, then leave for the next unconnected location.

I think the single map design is beneficial for multiplayer. In my every coop session and freedom it offers does become helpful - in the very least, that for example a coop partner can hop into town and do some shopping without me having to tag along. It is also a unique feature and design of Larian so I doubt it will go away.

That said! If they stick to it, they could design areas with that structure in mind. Act2&3 of BG3 felt far more natural, then act1. A big city consisting of few large maps with stuff tightly packed together, feels like a fair representation of the setting - a countryside where to factions can't locate each other less so. Perhaps also changing perspective when exploring could also make those smaller areas feel a bit more sprawling.